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“Unequivocal.”

If the public and policymakers want a single adjective to describe the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s new assessment report that’s the word.

Released Friday, the IPCC report states, that “warming in the climate system is unequivocal and since 1950 many changes have been observed throughout the climate system that are unprecedented over decades to millennia.”

“Our assessment of the science finds that the atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amount of snow and ice has diminished, the global mean sea level has risen and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased,” said Qin Dahe, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group I, responsible for this first stage of the IPCC’s reporting on climate. Whereas this report focuseson the geoscience of climate change, subsequent working groups, whose work will be published in 2014, will focus on other aspects of the science as well as mitigation.

Read the full report here.
Headline statements from the IPCC here (pdf).

The report reaffirms that the human influence on the planet’s dramatic warming is clear and beyond reproach. According to a press statement accompanying the release of the report:

It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. The evidence for this has grown, thanks to more and better observations, an improved understanding of the climate system response and improved climate models.